GAZA (Islamweb & News Agencies) - A fierce gunbattle erupted in the Gaza Strip early on Thursday, soon after Israel and the Palestinians agreed to try to forge a lasting truce that could boost U.S. efforts to create a global anti-terror alliance.One Palestinian was shot dead and at least 22 other people were wounded, four of them critically, in the fighting near the border with Egypt, Palestinian hospital sources said.
Hours earlier, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres agreed at talks in Gaza to renew efforts to implement a truce-to-talks plan that includes the lifting of Israeli military blockades of Palestinian areas.
Peres and Arafat also said security talks would resume on Friday, the first anniversary of a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation in which more than 750 people have been killed, and agreed to meet again next week. (Read photo caption below)
But neither side expressed much hope of quickly turning a shaky week-old cease-fire into a durable truce.
Bloodshed continued even as Peres and Arafat held their long-awaited truce talks at Gaza airport, and the two Nobel Peace laureates sat tense and unsmiling as they met.
Israeli troops shot dead a 16-year-old Palestinian only a few miles (km) from the airport, and three Israeli soldiers were wounded in a bomb blast in the same area in southern Gaza before the meeting.
Shooting continued overnight in the area -- near an occupation army post -- although other parts of Gaza and the West Bank were generally calm.
In the overnight shooting, occupation soldiers used heavy machineguns and the Palestinians fired with automatic rifles. Palestinian witnesses said the Resistance men feared tanks and a bulldozer spotted in the area were about to demolish Palestinian homes.
They said a tank shell hit a house and set it on fire.
PHOTO CAPTION:
FILE--Palestinian demonstrators hold a poster carrying the image of the boy Mohammed Aldura who was killed, and his father Jamal injured, when they were shot in the Netzarim junction in Gaza Strip at the beginning of the present Israeli-Palestinian round of violence, during a pro-Iraq demonstration outside Gaza City in this Feb. 19, 2001, file photo. These raw images have fed a great buildup of Arab anger -- not only against Israel but also against the United States, Israel's chief ally, already resented throughout the Middle East for imposing 11 years of sanctions and launching repeated airstrikes on Iraq. (AP Photo/Hatem Mousa, File)
- Sep 26 7:17 PM ET